(This article is rather picture heavy.)
The following paragraphs are just some background information and commentary, so if you want to skip it, the actual process of building this garage kit starts at the third paragraph after this short note. Also, sorry for some of the pictures not being the best of quality. (It took forever to cut the sizes down and the lighting wasn't ideal.)

This is my first blog post and my first large garage kit I’ve completed, so I’m really excited to share it all with you. I was originally on the fence about posting on here, since I don’t usually post anything on social media or databases like MFC, but I figured to give it a go. I did one garage kit in the past, so that is why I said this was my first large kit. The first one I ever did was this chibi Tsurumaru ITEM #324393. (If you want to see pictures, let me know and I can post a few.) The garage kit presented in this post is ITEM #523370. It was sold twice as a mail order and I was lucky enough to get a copy from the second one since the first one sold out crazy quickly. At first glance, I wasn’t as excited for this kit compared to the ones I got from the 2016 Summer Wonder Festival, but once I saw it in person, I fell in love with it. I decided to work immediately on this the second I received it in the mail.

I love the little bird on the basket and it's too cute, contrasting to Iwatooshi, who appears a little mischievous. It softens up the character and is overall sweet. The design is very original which is one thing I really enjoy about GKs. There are a lot of GKs that pose characters more interestingly than the big pvc companies which are a little more limited especially the Touken Ranbu characters. In case you guys are wondering, I do play Touken Ranbu, but lately I’ve been kind of neglectful. Sadly, I still have yet to get Iwatooshi in game even after grinding 4-3 and 4-4, but at least I have this amazing figure.

Now to the actual process.

Prep Work
Once I received this in the mail, I immediately began to work on this. Sorry, but I don’t have any pictures of the kit with the original seam lines and tabs, but you can take my word that the seams and tabs were very minor and well placed. The basket was amazingly detailed. The biggest problem with the seams were probably on the boots, but this was only because they were in very tight and hard to reach places, but everything turned out well with fine grit sandpaper and patience. I did use an X-Acto knife to make some seams more level and then finished it off with putty and sanding.

The fitting of the parts was really good and pinning was pretty easy. There were no major problems with fitting. I tried to correct the place where the head connects to the torso with some putty, but there was still a little gap on the final product. I also tried to fill in gaps to where the torso and the sleeves meets, but there is still a little gap. Same goes with where the legs meet. Overall, for a first attempt I think it turned out okay. I would have tried to have further fill these gaps, but I only realized this after painting.

Anyway, after I corrected all the major seams and gaps, I did a test fit for the whole figure as seen below.

I primed all my pieces with Tamiya’s primer in gray. I would have liked to have used a white primer for some parts like the skin, but I didn’t have that, so I just worked with what I had. After the first priming, I noticed other trouble areas and corrected them. Here are some of the pieces all primed and ready for paint. I decided to paint the basket, bows, tomatoes, and bird after all the main pieces.

Painting and Shading
I mixed all the colors for this kit using the primary colors and white and black. I used a small airbrush system for most parts and everything else is hand painted. The airbrush I used is actually for makeup, but I found out that I could water down paints and use the system anyway. I was just sure to clean everything very well. (I even had to take apart the airbrush to clean it.)

The purple pieces, hair, and some parts of the skin were airbrushed. Everything else I hand painted. I technically could have masked the obi and the green ribbons keeping the sleeves up, but decided to just hand paint it. (Sorry, I don’t know what the ribbons are called. If you know, let me know in the comments.) Here is a picture of the hair before shading.

I shaded all my pieces with chalk pastels. For the purple of his clothes, I used red shadows which I think turned out really nice. I had to use black to shade the green ribbons since they were so dark. I used a mix of orange and reddish brown to shade the hair and used orange and pink to shade the skin. Overall, I think the pieces turned out pretty good.

I hand painted the black on his boots and gloves using a shinier paint to give a different texture. I didn’t want the skin to be too matte, so I just made the boots and gloves shinier. I also painted the black and white stripes on the obi by hand.

I forgot to take pictures of the process of painting the eyes, so I only have pictures of them finished. (I will say that they were really hard to paint. I had do them twice and I had to paint the eyebrows like 5 times before I was satisfied. Also, the eyes aren’t 100% the same size when you look at them from the front, but you can’t really tell at the angle the figure is supposed to be looked at. I was too afraid to mess up all my hard work, so I just left them like that.)

Once the main body parts were finished, I glued them all together with a two part epoxy glue and then moved on to the little pieces that were still left behind.

I was able to complete all the little pieces in two days and I don’t have a lot of pictures since I was working late at night and forgot to take some. I painted the tomatoes with the red I used for the inside of the kimono, but added a little more yellow to make them a bit orangier. I used the glossy paints for the tomatoes like I did on the boots.

I finished painting the bow to the obi with black and white stripes and painted the ribbon keeping the sleeves up with the same green I used on the torso. I did not shade the obi, but I did to the green bow. I shaded the tomatoes slightly with some brick red and dark brown, especially near the leaves.

After shading the tomatoes, I painted the green leaves using a lighter green than the ribbons. After that, they were sealed and done.

The little bird was also quite hard to paint, especially the little black details on the face, but I think it ended up super cute. I also used a really small brush to add some dark brown to the feathers to give them some depth.

Last, but not least, I painted the basket with a tan base and waited for it to dry. I created a dark brown with the the tan I just used and added a lot of water so that it was really watery and translucent.

After the paint dried, I applied a thin layer of the watery, dark brown wash to the basket and used a paper towel to lightly wipe away excess paint. This left the basket with natural shading to all the little crevices without me having to spend a whole lot of time shading it with pastels and small paint brush.

Once all the little pieces were done, they were sealed and ready to be either glued in place or connected to the body.

Final Product
Without further ado, here is my completed Iwatooshi garage kit.

Final Thoughts
I think this was very successful. I am very pleased with how he turned out. There are a few minor things that could have been fixed further, but I do think it turned out pretty well for a first attempt. I haven't decided if I'm going to make a base for him since he already can stand alone, but maybe one with some grass would look nice and a fallen tomato. I don't know.

Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed this entry and have a good day ahead! If you guys have any further questions or comments, please leave it below.

Thank you so much! I actually had a little practice on the process before picking up Gks, which helped me improve.

moonstarfc (8 maand(en) geleden) #19102077Nice job!! I'm interested in GKs but I'm afraid to mess them up so I'd rather leave the paint job to someone else xD

Thank you!! I had the same reservations as you when I first started. I was afraid I would mess everything up and was even more afraid since the kit was an original that wasn't very cheap. I will say that with practice you get better. It was also helpful to look at other people's progress photos. If you didn't know, there is a YouTube channel called Leona's Workshop which I found very helpful since she has short videos on each process with helpful tips on different scenarios in her WIPs.murdoch (8 maand(en) geleden) #19104012Ahhhhh I love this GK! And that leg sculpt tho. I approve.
Paintjob is damn good, I especially love the way you shaded his skin and his clothing.TigerChan (8 maand(en) geleden) #19108743He looks really amazing!!

Thank you both so much! I know, those legs and biceps.

Redliger (8 maand(en) geleden) #19115865Good job on your first kit, the first one is always the hardest. It just gets easier and you can get more creative with each kit you build. The sky is the limit, welcome to a brand new world. :)